On this Sunday which is also the last day of January let us pause for a moment to take note of where we are. A new year has just begun and now a new month is coming up, charged with its weight of promise and probable disappointments, standing in the wings like an actor who is conscious of nothing but the anticipated cue, totally absorbed, a pillar of waiting. And now there is no help for it but to be cast adrift in the new month. One is plucked from one month to the next; the year is like a fast-moving Ferris wheel; tomorrow all the riders will be under the sign of February and there is no appeal, one will have to get used to living with its qualities and perhaps one will even adjust to them successfully before the next month arrives with a whole string of new implications in its wake.

“The System,” in Three Poems (1972).

[Sounds like a parody of a sermon. In 1971, January 31 fell on a Sunday.]

Monday, January 30, 2012

Mundane things, pitiful in their mundane assertiveness, their sad isolation. Kraft French dressing, glowing weirdly orange through its glass bottle, a green glass bowl of green salad, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, its paper wrapper still on. All are in repose, in their absolute thingness, under the overhead alarming bright light of the kitchen. They may or they should, they must, really, reveal the meaning of this silent room, this silent house, save that they won’t. There is no meaning. These things will evoke nothing.

In years to come, almost three-quarters of a century, they still evoke nothing. Orange, green, incandescent glare. Silence and loss. Nothing. There might be a boy of four at the table. He is sitting very straight and is possibly waiting for someone.

The back cover calls The Abyss of Human Illusion a novel. In fact it is a collection of fifty short pieces of doom and wit. I love Sorrentino’s writing. The details of his Brooklyn are the details of my Brooklyn.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

I can’t remember when I last saw a new comedy-drama as good as The Artist (2011, dir. Michel Hazanavicius). In these troubled times, The Artist offers the viewer a sweet escape into a world of laughter, music, and tears. Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are brilliant performers, and they look like the people they’re playing, actors from the 1920s and 30s. Everyone in the cast looks right: James Cutler and John Goodman in particular seem to be genuine time-travelers. (Contrast, say, Mad Men, in which everyone appears to be playing dress-up.) The film itself looks the part too, especially in outdoor scenes, which have the thin, watery light that suggests old. Three cheers for cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman.

There’s only one false touch in the film, and I’m not embarrassed to point it out: the intertitles use straight (“dumb”) quotation marks (" ") around dialogue, not curved (“ ”) quotation marks, aka “book quotes” or “curly quotes” or “smart quotes” or “typographic quotation marks.” Glance through an assortment of silent-film intertitles and it’s easy to see that proper quotation marks were the norm. Elaine and I are hardly typomaniacs: that we noticed the glitch makes me think that it will be widely noticed. (And perhaps corrected for the DVD, please?)

Umberto Eco says that Casablanca is “the movies.” So too is The Artist. Go see the movies!

From an article on Barnes & Noble and the future of the book business:

Carolyn Reidy, president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster, says the biggest challenge is to give people a reason to step into Barnes & Noble stores in the first place. “They have figured out how to use the store to sell e-books,” she said of the company. “Now, hopefully, we can figure out how to make that go full circle and see how the e-books can sell the print books.”

Thursday, January 26, 2012

I turned on the television to watch a few minutes of the Republican debate and heard the voice of hard-hitting journalist Wolf Blitzer: “Stay tuned to find out why each man on this stage thinks his wife would be the best First Lady.”

When I teach ancient works, I like to point out that logical coherence is not always the point. For instance: if it’s the tenth year of the war, why is King Priam only now asking Helen to identify the various Achaeans laying siege to Troy? I think there’s only one good answer to such a question: “It’s a story.” For the purposes of the story, it makes sense to have Priam ask about these things, tenth year or no tenth year: his questions and comments let us understand his attitude toward “the enemy” (quite different from those that hold in our world). And in Iliad 3, it really is as if the war is just beginning, tenth year or no tenth year: single combat between Menelaus and Paris — now they think of it? — might settle the Helen question, until Athena breaks the armies’ truce and battle begins in 4.

When I raise or respond to this kind of logical question, I invoke the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. How can one bowl of porridge be too hot, one too cold, and one just right? Well, it’s a story. I am now happy (I think) to see that I am not the first person to have wondered about the temperature differences. Physicist Chad Orzel addressed the question in a 2009 blog post: The Faulty Thermodynamics of Children’s Stories (Uncertain Principles: Physics, Politics, Pop Culture). And there’s a 2007 novel that investigates the question (and many more questions), Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear.

Richard Arum and Jospia Roksa have been following the students of Academically Adrift into life after college. The general conclusion, as summarized by the Chronicle of Higher Education: “College graduates who showed paltry gains in critical thinking and little academic engagement while in college have a harder time than their more accomplished peers as they start their careers.” No surprise there, only a strong reminder: a credential alone is not enough.

“We’re trying really hard to make things better,” said one former Apple executive. “But most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from.”

The details are horrific.

In a related story, a nationwide Times survey found that owners of Apple products are largely unaware of where those products are manufactured. Only eighteen percent knew (or thought?) that Apple products are made abroad.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I have been watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Me-TV, and I must confess: I envy Mary Richards. Not her hair. Nor her cozy little part-of-a-house apartment. Nor her architectural-salvage M.

I envy Mary Richards the simplicity of her technology. The sum total: A table-top telephone. A Sony portable television, reception adjusted by built-in antenna. A Sony stereo system: a receiver/radio/turntable unit and two small speakers. A portable manual typewriter.

Mary never had to figure out how to get an old-phone ringtone into a cell phone. Her ring came with the phone, loud and clear. Mary never had to reprogram her television after getting a new cable box. She watched what was already “on” and reprogrammed by changing the channel. Mary did not have to buy a ground loop isolator to fix a problem with a humming turntable, only to find that the device failed to fix the problem. Her turntable was grounded. Mary did not to have to uninstall the software package that came with her HP printer and download a simpler and better package from Apple. She used Wite-Out.

Of course, Mary never made it past 1977.

Jokes for Murray Slaughter to insert in the above paragraphs:

“Cell phone? Sounds like something you’d use in prison.”

“Cable box? Sounds like what Marie uses for storing sweaters.”

“A humming turntable? Doesn’t it know the words?”

“Download? Sounds like what Lou’s gonna do to Ted in about five minutes.”

[I had just about the same stereo as a teenager. The simplest way to remove a turntable hum might be to get an extension cord and run all components to the same outlet. And Elaine got it out of me: I do kinda envy Mary her apartment.]

The documentary The Last Mountain (dir. Bill Haney, 2011) tells the story of West Virginians’ fight against mountaintop removal mining, a technology with catastrophic consequences for the environment and human health. In this film, the line between what’s wrong and what’s right is clear. Greed, corporate lobbying, and utter disregard for the well-being of West Virginia’s people are amply on display. (Meet Don Blankenship.) But there’s hope too, in the promise of wind power and in the efforts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a host of dedicated citizens and environmental activists. Among them: Susan Bird, Maria Gunnoe, Jennifer Hall-Massey, Lorelei Scarbro, David Aaron Smith, Bo Webb, and Ed Wiley. Their names are as important to note as those of the better-known figures. Watch Ed Wiley stand up to West Virginia’s then-governor Joe Manchin: we should all have such courage.

[This film serves as a nice reminder that giving money to the candidate, not the party, can be a smarter choice. That a contribution to the Democratic National Committee might help the likes of Joe Manchin makes me cringe.]

From a New York Times article on why Apple products are made in China:

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

If Romney becomes the nominee, look for Bain to become a familiar name in political discourse. I think though that it’ll be Gingrich, and that Obama v. Gingrich will resemble Clinton v. Dole. Gingrich seems well suited to play a cranky old guy.

I still think it’ll be Gingrich. And indeed, he seems well suited to play a cranky old guy. More specifically, a cranky old white guy. The next nine months will, I think, come to feel like a slog through toxic sludge. But I have little doubt about how the election will go.

[If I were a Republican voter, I’d have voted for Jon Huntsman. I guess I wouldn’t have a great career as a Republican voter.]

Though its characters haven’t aged in years, the Hi and Lois world is ever in flux. Furniture disappears and windows change shape in the interstices; a neighbor changes his hair color and no one says a thing. I like the contrast between the speech balloons above: first Hi’s risqué suggestion, then the twins’ cheerful cure for Lois’s seasonal affective disorder.¹ I notice too that the windows have again changed shape.

But there’s a more fundamental difference (as Professor Gingrich might say) between the above panels. Notice how the art has changed: as of January 15, every character, every object, every speech balloon is enclosed by a thick Sharpie-like line. I’ve read that eight people “animate” the strip: it looks as if they’re taking turns.

Update, January 22: Things are back to normal on the Hi-Lo production line. (But that shadow?)

[Hi and Lois, January 22, 2012.]

¹ Re: seasonal affective disorder: that’s what Lois thinks is wrong. I suspect though that it has something to do with Hi’s clumsy attempt to “turn up the heat.”

[In the essay “Authority and American Usage,” Wallace glosses SNOOT as his “nuclear family’s nickname for a really extreme usage fanatic.” The acronym stands for “Sprachgefühl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance” or “Syntax Nudniks Of Our Time.“ “Authority and American Usage” appears in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (New York: Little, Brown, 2005). The essay first appeared in Harper’s as “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage.”]

Thursday, January 19, 2012

I had to laugh when I saw the ID for this incoming call: was it the result of some new truth-in-dialing law? No. It’s the phone company doing its work. Do a search for 567-248-4400 and you’ll find endless reports of nuisance calls about lowering credit-card rates. Bravo, phone company.

If you’re going to write about writing, write well. Someone at the Huffington Post didn’t:

“Twitter, with it’s unavoidable limitations . . . .”

[When is it its? When it’s not it is. When is it it’s? When it is it is.]

“”The logical steps your reader has to navigate to find the meaning of your sentence is more difficult if you use the passive voice.”

[Well, sometimes, sort of. But we don’t navigate steps in reading a sentence; we navigate the sentence. And we don’t “find the meaning” of a sentence; we understand a sentence (or don’t). Things are also more difficult when your subjects and verbs don’t agree.]

“Adverbs are inherently weakening.”

[I wondered whether the writer is joking about inherently, but nothing else in his presentation makes me think that he is. At any rate, this claim about adverbs is absurd: if I say I slept fitfully, the adverb is crucial to my meaning.]

[“When is it its?” is from Jessica Mitford’s Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (1979). Does anyone still read — or listen to — Jessica Mitford? I was Huffington Post-free for weeks till (not ’til) a Google Alert pulled me back in, dammit.]

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

My imaginary liner notes for Van Dyke Parks’s latest singles are now available for your reading pleasure at Bananastan Records. The music — “Black Gold” b/w “Aquarium,” with art by FrankHolmes, and “Amazing Graces” b/w “Hold Back Time,” with art by CharlesRay — is terrific. “Black Gold,” a ballad of environmental catastrophe, is, to my ears, one for the ages. You can sample 1:30 of its 6:21 at iTunes.

Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in.

But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.

Yes, I am opposed to PIPA and SOPA and have let my representatives in Congress know that. As a Blogger user, I cannot “go dark.” I don’t want to either. I already have enough problems when I try to use Blogger on an iPad.

If I sound biased, that’s because I am. Biased toward the actual record, not the spin; biased toward a president who has conducted himself with grace and calm under incredible pressure, who has had to manage crises not seen since the Second World War and the Depression, and who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name.

“A lifelong Apple superfan, Daisey sees some photos online from the inside of a factory that makes iPhones, starts to wonder about the people working there, and flies to China to meet them.” From This American Life: “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory.”

March 16, 2012: This American Lifehas retracted the story. The short explanation: “many of Mike Daisey’s experiences in China were fabricated.”

Monday, January 16, 2012

Jesus told a parable one day, and he reminded us that a man went to hell because he didn’t see the poor. His name was Dives. He was a rich man. And there was a man by the name of Lazarus who was a poor man, but not only was he poor, he was sick. Sores were all over his body, and he was so weak that he could hardly move. But he managed to get to the gate of Dives every day, wanting just to have the crumbs that would fall from his table. And Dives did nothing about it. And the parable ends saying, “Dives went to hell, and there were a fixed gulf now between Lazarus and Dives.”

There is nothing in that parable that said Dives went to hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. It is true that one day a rich young ruler came to him, and he advised him to sell all, but in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery and not setting forth a universal diagnosis. And if you will look at that parable with all of its symbolism, you will remember that a conversation took place between heaven and hell, and on the other end of that long-distance call between heaven and hell was Abraham in heaven talking to Dives in hell.

Now Abraham was a very rich man. If you go back to the Old Testament, you see that he was the richest man of his day, so it was not a rich man in hell talking with a poor man in heaven; it was a little millionaire in hell talking with a multimillionaire in heaven. Dives didn’t go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn’t realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he was passed by Lazarus every day and he never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum. Indeed, Dives went to hell because he sought to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty.

And this can happen to America, the richest nation in the world — and nothing’s wrong with that — this is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Rick Santorum’s recent performance in a sparring match with college students is one small moment in the evolving story of equal marriage rights. But it’s a moment that makes me mighty angry, for three reasons:

1. Santorum treats an urgent question about the dignity of human relationships as an occasion to score cheap debater’s points: “Well, what about three men?” He begins by moving right past the possibility of partnership to raise the specter of conjugal trios and quintets. Notice too his ham-fisted sarcasm: “I’m surprised I got a gay-marriage question in a college crowd. I’m really — that’s a shocker for me.” He is a tasteless, tone-deaf smarty-pants who seems to have no understanding of why same-sex partners in a loving relationship might want to marry.

2. Santorum casts marriage as “the union that causes children to be created.” But men and women marry for many reasons. And they “come together to have a union” for many reasons, not necessarily “to produce children.” (Produce?)

3. Santorum’s slippery-slope logic is specious. Santorum says that “Reason says that if you think it’s okay for two, then you have to differentiate with me as to why it’s not okay for three.” Slippery slopes though have a way of tripping up those who argue from them. If we follow Santorum’s logic, it’s the institution of heterosexual marriage that is itself the cause of problems. For when we allow a man and a woman to marry, look what happens: same-sex partners want to marry too.

That Santorum is on the wrong side of history seems pretty clear to me. It’s telling though that even he pays some sort of lip-service to the dignity of same-sex partnerships by granting that “all relationships provide some good to society.” That must mean that same-sex relationships provide some good to society. So why can’t same-sex partners marry?

I’m reading Herbert C. Morton’s The Story of Webster’s Third: Philip Gove’s Controversial Dictionary and Its Critics and teaching David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. I have dictionaries on my brain. Thus this post.

It’s impossible to tell from the ad that Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (published in September 1961, lower left in the ad) was already the subject of heated (and often badly informed) criticism. This issue of Life has a letter from Gove defending the Third against a recent editorial:

The controversy over Webster’s Third is a remarkable moment in the so-called culture wars (resulting largely from an ill-conceived publicity campaign). I laugh to think that I used this dictionary for many years before learning that anyone found fault with it: to me, the Third seemed, and still seems, just fine. And I for one like the idea of Ethel Merman being quoted in a dictionary (or “the dictionary”): “Three shows a day drain a girl.”

Friday, January 13, 2012

David Marsh, who created International Apostrophe Day, isn’t troubled by the disappearance of the apostrophe from the name of the British book chain Waterstones (was Waterstone’s). Nor am I. It’s tedious turning names ending in ’s into possessives. Consider Chuck E. Cheese’s.

M. Hugh Steeply’s father’s M*A*S*H addiction began when the show went into syndication:

“The show was incredibly popular, and after a few years of Thursday nights it started also to run daily, during the day, or late at night, sometimes, in what I remember all too well was called syndication, where local stations bought old episodes and chopped them up and loaded them with ads, and ran them. And this, note, was while all-new episodes of the show were still appearing on Thursdays at 2100. I think this was the start… .

“The fucking show ran on two different local stations in the Capital District. Albany and environs. For a while, this one station even had a M*A*S*H hour, two of them, back to back, every night, from 2300. Plus another half an hour in the early P.M., for the unemployed or something.”

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996).

Art imitates life: “this one station” sounds an awful lot like east-central Illinois’s WCIA, which for years offered ample servings of M*A*S*H after the early and late news (one episode early, two late). How many times did I hear it: “M*A*S*H is next.” Wallace, as you may know, grew up in east-central Illinois, in Urbana.

Life imitates art: two cable channels now offer three hours of M*A*S*H on weekdays: 5:00–7:00 p.m. Central (TV Land) and 6:00–7:00 p.m. Central (Me-TV), six different episodes. On Sundays, TV Land runs M*A*S*H from 4:00 to 7:30 p.m. Central. Check your local listings. Or don’t.

Sean at Blackwing Pages sent this screenshot, from an episode of Modern Marvels — Engineering Disasters. He writes that this telephone appeared in a depiction “of the office of a U.S. Navy radar installation in the ocean (much like an oil platform) that went down in rough seas.”

Edward Artin went to work at G. & C. Merriam in 1930. He began as a proofreader, later joined the pronunciation staff, and worked on Webster’s Third New International Dictionary:

It was the inadequacy of the historical files and a lack of confidence in the research underlying some of the Second Edition pronunciations that led Artin to embark on his extraordinary effort to record as completely and systematically as he could the actual pronunciations prevailing in different parts of the country and different English-speaking nations from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Extraordinary indeed:

His wife Dorothy L. Artin, an editorial assistant for the Second Edition, recalls that “we were married in 1931, and I soon learned that much, indeed most, of our ‘free’ time was to be dedicated” to his consuming interest in how people pronounce words. “During the ensuing forty-three years … evening after evening, weekend after weekend, holiday after holiday, he listened to representative speakers, on radio, television, or face-to-face, all the while making … citations on three-by-five slips.”

Herbert C. Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third: Philip Gove’s Controversial Dictionary and Its Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Morton’s book is a great introduction to the world of lexicography.

[“Evening after evening, weekend after weekend, holiday after holiday”: What tone do you hear in this phrasing? Amused tolerance, or disbelief?]

Deriving from Greek, “kudos” entered English as slang popular at British universities in the 19th century. In its earliest use, the word referred to the prestige or renown that one gained by having accomplished something noteworthy. The sense meaning “praise given for achievement” came about in the 1920s. As this later sense became the predominant one, some English speakers, unaware of the word’s Greek origin, began to treat it as a plural count noun, inevitably coming up with the back-formation “kudo” to refer to a single instance of praise. For the same reason, when “kudos” is used as a subject you may see it with either a singular or plural verb.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Executive Suite (dir. Robert Wise, 1954) is a must-see film for would-be residents of the dowdy world. The film is a wonderland of mid-century technology: calendars, card files, clipboards, desk blotters, desk sets, dictation machines, file cabinets, in-boxes, intercoms, notepads, rocker blotters, switchboards, telegraph machinery, telephones, time clocks, typwriters, and one Wheeldex, which was, it’s clear, more than ready for its close-up.

The Wheeldex preceded the better-known Rolodex. Back at the office, this Wheeldex was the envy of its co-workers.

Executive Suite (dir. Robert Wise, 1954) tells the story of the battle for the presidency of an American furniture company, the Tredway Corporation. The film has a great ensemble cast, with Louis Calhern, Paul Douglas, Nina Foch, Fredric March, Walter Pidegon, Barbara Stanwyck, and Shelley Winters, among others. Of greatest interest are the Wallings, McDonald (William Holden) and Mary (June Allyson). Don is a Charles Eames-like industrial designer whose plans for innovative products are stopped again and again by Tredway’s cost-cutting, chart-making controller Loren Shaw (March). Mary is no Ray Eames: we see her not as a collaborator but as a patient partner, appalled by the way Tredway frustrates her husband’s creativity. Avery Bullard, the company’s late president, hired Don with a promise that he could design and build whatever he wanted. But Don’s work on a “new molding process” has been stopped at Shaw’s directive. And the company’s most profitable merchandise is its Shaw-approved K-F line, cheap stuff with cracking finishes and legs that come loose.

The film’s interiors, by Emile Kuri and Edwin B. Willis, are rich in meaning: in the Tredway Tower, all is marble, stone, and carved wood — a contrast to the shoddy materials and workmanship of the company’s products. The Wallings’ house is modernity itself.

[“If it hadn’t been for this room the past few months, you couldn’t have lived.”]

Compare photographs of the Eames house and office. If you look closely at the second photograph of the Eames house, you can see a dried desert plant, a signature Eames element, hanging in space. There’s something similar on the wall in Don’s studio, behind Mary’s shoulder. The 3 on Don’s wall is another Eames reference: it’s an Eames3, or nearly one. And the reference to an unexplained “molding process” recalls of course the molded plywood of the Eameses’ chairs.

The most exciting moments in Executive Suite come in the film’s final boardroom scene. You can guess, I suspect, who gets to be president. The excitement in the scene comes from the clash between two different ways of thinking about the work of a corporation: one which seeks to cut costs, maximize profit, and pay stockholders a dividend; the other which bears in mind the need to build a future. As Don tells Shaw,

“We have an obligation to keep this company alive, not just this year or next or the year after that. Sometimes you have to use your profits for the growth of the company, not pay them all out in dividends to impress the stockholders with your management record.”

Don’s dream, to make low-priced furniture “that will sell because it has beauty and function and value,” will now come true. As did the Eameses’ dream: “getting the most of the best to the greatest number of people for the least.”

Saturday, January 7, 2012

As I prepare for the spring semester, I face a crisis. In their efforts to look all folksy and down to earth, certain candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have — I’ll say it — stolen the elements of my style. My sweater-vests: gone. My signature look of button-down shirt and jeans: gone. Snatched, swiped, purloined.

I have prepared a sharp and decisive response: come Monday, I’m wearing a tie.

Friday, January 6, 2012

On my first visit to Los Angeles last November, I paid a lot of attention to the signage. Signage, signage, every where. The intersecting planes suggested to me a twenty-first-century California cubism. Compare the composition above to, say, Juan Gris’s Still life with bottle of Bordeaux.

[I’m happy to know that Gris is pronounced just as I’ve always pronounced it: \ˈgrēs\. Dropping the s seems to be a mistaken affectation, like speaking of Gertrude Schtein.]

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Roger Ebert’s recently offered six reasons for the drop in movie ticket sales in 2011. His general conclusion: theaters “are losing their charm.” Yes, they are. Going to the movies at our nearby multiplex means going to the movies, literally: you can hear the crashes and explosions from whatever is playing next door along with the movie you paid for. It’s like living in an apartment building.

There are still great theaters though. Close to home, my favorite place to see a movie is The Art Theater in Champaign, Illinois. The Art offers intelligent programming, atypical and well-priced snacks and drinks, appropriate pre-movie music, minimal advertising, and a terrific sound system. There’s one screen, and the audience comes to pay attention: what a difference that makes. I also recommend the more majestic Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts. For one lovely year in the mid-1980s Elaine and I lived a couple of blocks from the Coolidge Corner and got to see a different double-bill two or three times a week. Now we try to see a movie there when we visit Boston.

I would hate to see independent theaters go the way of so many record stores and bookstores. You too? If you know of a great theater, please, write about it in a comment. And encourage your family and friends to go to the movie, not the movies.

Update, January 10: Here are links to theaters recommended by readers in the comments:

Watching Rick Santorum on television last night, I felt that I was watching a satellite transmission from Htrae. I was struck especially by Santorum’s explanation of why manufacturing jobs have gone overseas: “It’s because government made workers uncompetitive, by driving up the cost of doing business here.” And then: “When Republican purists say to me ‘Well, why are you treating manufacturing different than retail?’ I say ‘Because Wal-Mart’s not moving to China and taking their jobs with them.’” Wal-Mart: keeping jobs on Htrae!

Browsing around this morning for santorum and wal-mart, I found this page. Suddenly the Iowa caucuses seem to make sense:

[A reality check: in June 2011, Time reported that the average manufacturing wage in China is $3.10 an hour. In the United States: $22.30. According to Time, rising wages in China are driving manufacturing to Cambodia, Laos, India, Vietnam, and the United States.]

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

At the Washington Post, Greg Sargent looks at Mitt Romney’s claims about job creation. The conclusion: Romney’s claim to have helped create 100,000 jobs is “at best unsubstantiated.” And the number of jobs created by Bain Capital may be surpassed by the number of layoffs resulting from the firm’s work.

When I tore the wrapper from my 2012 Moleskine datebook, I was surprised to find three pages of tiny stickers with which to decorate the pages. These three stickers caught my eye, and I looked closely to make sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing: tiny-sticker-sized evidence of large-scale cultural change. These stickers, most likely meant to mark the name and telephone number of a beloved, acknowledge that love comes in assorted varieties. Everyone gets a sticker.

[Can anyone use some stickers? I’m kind of old for this stuff. Besides, I have my wife’s name and our number memorized.]

For much of the twenty-first century, the appropriate way to say the name of the year has been the subject of ongoing talks in my family. And as they say in the world of diplomacy, the talks have been frank. Me, I’ve been starting with twenty- since 2001.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Yesterday morning, half an hour before we had to leave for the airport, Rachel and Ben began trying out this song. Just enough time for Elaine and me to learn it. It’s “Half-Acre,” by Hem. For added realism, watch with a mirror.

PDFCalendar This customizable calendar is great for the student or teacher who wants to map out a semester on one page.

TM Micro-Mini Calendar I’ve never had occasion to use Claude Pavur’s ultra-minimal calendar, but my inner child finds the idea of it irresistible. The Micro-Mini is no doubt the choice of ten-year-old secret agents everywhere.

UNIX calendar command The UNIX command cal is handy for making a three- or four-month calendar to tape into a notebook. Thanks to Hawk Sugano for sharing his knowledge.

One more: I’ve made a plain and dowdy 2012 calendar, three months per 8½ x 11 page. That’s a sample to the left. The font is Gill Sans Bold; the colors are Licorice and Cayenne (otherwise known as black and dark red). If you’d like a PDF, send me an e-mail. (If you’re reading in a reader, click on through: the address is in the sidebar.)

“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”

Don’t look for premiums orcoupons, as the cost ofthe thoughts blended inORANGE CRATE ART pro-hibits the use of them.